


'Til All Tidings Ceased

by RaisingCaiin



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, First Time, Gen, Language Barrier, M/M, Mistaken Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 08:44:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11917314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaisingCaiin/pseuds/RaisingCaiin
Summary: For all that he actually met Lúthien, once, Tyelkormo has never quite understood the songs exalting her. She was brave and stunning and powerful, yes, but to claim that she once sang Mandos himself into submission?But then, following the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, Tyelkormo gains an unexpected understanding of how one might come to regard another so highly that they would sing such songs of them.





	'Til All Tidings Ceased

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mangacrack](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mangacrack/gifts).



> Pinch hit for an unidentified recipient! I just couldn't scroll past this most excellent prompt. . . 
> 
> "I'm not picky. The Feanorian Clan is always a safe bet. That includes incest like Maglor/Maedhros, the Ambarussa together or Curufin&Celebrimbor. . . First of all, I love canon divergence. Give me all the AUs you can think of. Can be 1) fluffy, fixing all what went wrong in the first age. or 2) depressingly dark. I can't say no to this either, especially if there're some supernatural elements in it. a little mystery here and there, the unexplained creatures in the shadows etc. 3) I'm a big fan of politics a la Game of Thrones and messed up characters. But seriously, I'm not difficult to please. Just pick a thing and run with it." 
> 
> What can I say - I picked A Thing and ran with it, and then _it_ ran away all on its own dragging me kicking and screaming behind it. . . 
> 
> Tremendous thanks to [Tyellas](https://thebyrchentwigges.tumblr.com/) for a last minute beta!
> 
> Title is from the Silm itself, ch. 20, describing how long people knew where Beren and Lúthien were. Language glosses, etc., in end notes

For all that he once met the storied maid herself, Tyelkormo has never understood the songs exalting Lúthien. All that drivel of how she is fairest among the Eldar – the notion that sun and moon and stars alike praise her beauty – even the grim tales that Mandos himself once heeded her words – have always seemed like so much foolishness to Tyelkormo’s mind.

And though he grasps it slightly better, he does not understand his own brother’s vicious disparagement either.

 _She is but a maid, wherever she is now_ , Curufinwë has been known to argue, though none of the Noldor can in deed tell where Lúthien has gone – her people, the Sindar, have held her too close. But her Mannish lover is said to have been slain by a wolf, some years past, and her father by the Naugrim, only two seasons ago. Of Lúthien herself, though, the Noldor have no word.

 _She bested me by luck alone!_ Curufinwë also still claims, and though Tyelkormo knows better of this, well – he also knows better than to disagree.

But in truth, it was not through her beauty – though beautiful she was, and surely remains – that Lúthien bested Curufinwë, or enthralled the bards, or even mastered the Dark Hunter himself. She was – and surely still she is – formidable and compelling and luminous enough in herself that she needed not foreground her beauty. And it is that which perturbed Curufinwë – astonished the bards – lulled the Dark One into complacency.

Lúthien, Tyelkormo knows, was neither simple maid nor deific goddess. She simply _was_. But that, no mere story could ever describe. 

But for all that he laments the foolish talk of her, Lúthien makes for an excellent excuse when Tyelkormo must escape Amon Ereb.

The air of Carnistir’s crumbling fortress has long since grown heavy and stale, rank with their guilt and their blame and their circular arguments. For the sons of Fëanáro had survived the disastrous Fifth Battle – that which their Sindar allies name only in whispers, _Nirnaeth Arnoediad_ – only through luck, or not even that, but the Men of Dor-lomin’s mistaken belief that Turukáno cared whether his cousins lived or died.

And they all know this – that they, proud sons of a prouder father, were in truth only spared by the agency of Men and the hidden kingship of the line of Indis.

So within the confines of Amon Ereb they snap and they snarl like mad dogs, and sooner or later more blood will be shed. It is only Tyelkormo, it seems, who has tired of unclean bloodshed – only Tyelkormo, who will fight to leave their sin behind. 

He tells Curufinwë that he is leaving to seek the fate of Lúthien. To see if still she holds a Silmaril. To see if now they might bargain for it from her.

Curufinwë snarls, but eventually stands aside. And none of the others even seek to bar his way.

But when he has passed the range of sight of Amon Ereb’s guards, Tyelkormo turns again – not north toward Doriath, where surely Lúthien has gone to take up her father’s crown, but south toward Ossiriand, where dwell only the Laiquendi and their utter unawareness of Fëanáro’s cursed jewels.

He sets out, the tale of Lúthien and its unknown ending simply an excuse set forth for his brother.

The last thing he expects is to step into a tale such as Lúthien’s himself.  

 

~ ~ ~

Ossiriand is a pleasant land. Its distance from the Dark Hunter’s hellish iron stronghold has protected its grasslands, its waterways, its trees, from His ravages, and the Land of Seven Rivers flourishes, as do few other realms across beleaguered Beleriand.

And it is in Ossiriand that Tyelkormo’s disdain for the common accounts of Lúthien is first repaid. For the youth he sees dancing there, in a glade of the south, occupies all his thought, all his notice – all his breath – in much the same way that Lúthien is always said to do.

He is grace incarnate and light personified, this creature Tyelkormo must stop and watch. The sun gleams down upon his hair, but its radiance is lost in, outshone by, long loose tresses of purest silver; the trees about the clearing throw dapples of shade upon his lissome form, but he slips through them laughing, unmarred by the touch of shadow that would darken any other visage. Every footstep is light enough that the grasses but bow at his touch, and spring up again behind him when he has moved on; each gesture of his slim arms could have been planned to draw the gaze to their lean muscles, resplendent skin.

And as he dances, this vision of radiance, so too he sings – some air of no seeming form, its notes jaunty in one breath and haunting the next, its cadences darting in and out of the river Gelion’s cheery swells as though they were fish, silver-scaled as their singer. And for all that his song is in the Sinda tongue – a form of speech that Tyelkormo has little knowledge of, for his brothers and their peoples have never heeded the Ban of Elu Thingollo – it is easy enough to imagine that it is a song of the young summertime all about them, a season of growth and verdancy and life . . .

And then the end of his dance – a graceful twirl that begins at his upraised fingertips and ripples down his entire body, leaving him folded gracefully and panting softly with laughter amidst the waving grasses – leaves the youth facing Tyelkormo, who in his wonder cannot duck back into the underbrush quite quickly enough. Their eyes catch, and meet, and hold.

Another thing Tyelkormo has never understood is the vagaries of elaborate speech, where one thing is said with the implicit understanding that the speaker truly means another entirely. He almost drowned, once, the first time he set foot within a river of these eastern shores, so unlike their tame cousins in the West – so, having actually experienced the sensation of lungs crying for breath when no breath was to be had, has long deemed it absurd that anyone would describe a meeting of gazes as drowning in the other’s eyes.  

But thus it happens now. The youth’s eyes are grey and sharp and piercing, even across such a distance, even from his lowered seat amongst the grasses, and Tyelkormo’s breath is driven from his breast much as it had been that first and only time a river’s waters had drawn him under.

The youth rises with as much grace as he had thrown himself down, and steps toward Tyelkormo’s place of half-concealment with a breath-taking trust.

As if he does not know who – _what_ – he faces. As if he does not comprehend what kind of monster it is that looks back at him from the eyes of a son of Fëanáro.

“Nadh Fëaryn?” the youth asks instead, his slender hand stopping some distance from Tyelkormo’s face, as though unsure whether it would actually encounter physical form were it to alight. Something of wonder colors his voice, something of awe.  

But what little of the Sinda tongue Tyelkormo knows is to be had by way of Curufinwë, their father’s shadow in all things – languages and obduracy and hostility alike. And as Curufinwë uses only the vocabulary of a Sindar soldier, Tyelkormo knows the directives for _fight_ and _fuck_ and _flee_ , but nothing better – finer, softer, sweeter – that he might offer this radiant creature.

_Art thou. . ._

So instead he resorts to the tongue he knows best, that of the beasts – the speech of horse, and hind, and hound. He lowers his head – slowly, carefully, for he is that much taller than the youth before him – and brushes gently into the palm of that upraised hand. Down the bridge of his own nose he encourages it, nuzzling into the youth’s hand as though it has gentled him. 

“Nadh er Fëaryn,” the youth breathes, raising his hand to begin that soft stroke down Tyelkormo’s face anew.

_Thou art. . ._

Encouraged that the youth has not fled – and drawn forward by some yearning he cannot name – Tyelkormo risks a step closer.

The youth does not shy. They now stand less than an arm’s length apart.

“Ni alind er thand,” the youth whispers. This time it is he who steps forward, closing the last length between them, his hand rising for yet another stroke. And Tyelkormo, emboldened, meets the gesture halfway, embellishing the mute speech of beasts with a term from the lover’s. He grasps the youth’s hand in both of his own and raises it the rest of the way himself, pressing a soft kiss to the palm.

It is monstrous folly, to risk bringing another into the doom that he and his brothers have brought upon themselves.

It is more monstrous, more foolish yet, that Tyelkormo in his sudden rapture does not care.

“ _Ai!_ ” The youth tugs at his trapped hand, once, but quickly stills. He seems more astonished than displeased – as if wondering why Tyelkormo would do as he has done – and Tyelkormo, emboldened further, dares another kiss, lower, to his wrist.

“Ŭ!” And here, it seems, lie the youth’s limits, for he tugs his hand free and flees, faster than Tyelkormo can even gather his wits to follow.

And the forest itself seems in league with him, for even the greatest of Tyelkormo’s woodscraft – the sharpest of his tracking skills, the finest of his huntsmanship – cannot avail him in finding the youth’s trail, beyond the other side of the glade.

Randomly, he picks a direction – east, by the passage of the sun – and strikes forward.

“Aranel!” he cries. “Aranel!”

For that much he can cobble together from the rough dregs of the Sinda tongue he has learned from Curufinwë – _Aranel_ names its bearer noble, kingly, foremost among the Eldar.

And if it occurs to Tyelkormo the role that her Mannish lover played in the tale of Lúthien – how the outlaw is said to have spent a season wandering the wilderness crying out _Tinúviel!_ – than resolutely he pushes this ridiculous thought from his mind.

 

~ ~ ~

He has not traveled east long before he feels the weight of eyes, sharp and piercing and grey, settle upon his back.

Thus far, the language of beasts has served him better than what little he knows of the Sinda. So Tyelkormo huffs with amusement, letting his watcher know that Tyelkormo knows he is being watched, and turns south again, retracing his steps back to the Gelion.

He travels more slowly now, unknowing of how fast a pace his new shadow can keep. He travels more carefully now, hunting no longer and building no night fires, unwilling to learn how much destruction, even warranted, his new shadow will tolerate before leaving him once more.

The youth does not step forward again that night, or the next, as Tyelkormo continues south along the Gelion.

But then, that third soft summer evening, he does.

Tyelkormo’s heart batters a strange tattoo against his ribs as the youth settles down across from the pallet he has made of his cloak and smiles, a small and tentative thing in the soft moonlight.

If Arien’s light was no match for him during the day, then Tilion’s at night cannot even compete. The youth is as radiant now as he had been in the glade.

“Aranel,” Tyelkormo whispers, fighting every instinct that bids him rise from his cloak and go to his prize.  

He has not won, yet. He does not even know quite what he dares compete for.

“Dior,” the youth counters. At least now, though, he smiles – not frightened as before, but curious, inquisitive.

“Aranel,” Tyelkormo insists. It is imperative that this vision knows what Tyelkormo thinks of him, though Tyelkormo lacks any better way to explain his wonder.

“Dior,” the youth says again.

Then he holds out a delicate, snow-pale bloom.

At first Tyelkormo simply considers the flower, unsure whether it is intended for him, or as some manner of sign. Then, when the youth shakes it gently, light and chiding, Tyelkormo reaches forward – only for the youth to draw back, making as though he will stand and flee.

In the language of beasts, a whimper means _no_. And the youth re-settles, cautiously, when Tyelkormo whimpers in apology.

He holds out the flower again, and this time, Tyelkormo extends his hand, palm up, a cautious distance away.

The youth beams, and drops the flower into his hand.  “Niphredil,” he says, approvingly.

And so it commences, that a son of Fëanáro begins to learn the tongue of the Sindar not for war or distress, but in full willingness and desire.

 

~ ~ ~

Further south they wander together, following the Gelion. Aranel does not spend the full of the day, or even the night, at Tyelkormo’s side, but dips onto and away from his path as he chooses. But when he does appear, it is always with some new bit or bob to name for Tyelkormo in the Sinda tongue.

By the time they have reached a new river, then, Tyelkormo has learned that _sîr_ signifies a fast-flowing body of water, while _aras_ means both stag and hind. When Aranel calls for _dandolh_ , he has something he wants to name for Tyelkormo; when he demands _îdh,_ he wants Tyelkormo to stop for the night.

And _fëaryn_ , the name that Aranel had bestowed upon him at their first meeting, means something akin to _guardian of the wood_. For so the youth seems to think Tyelkormo, upon seeing his fair hair and hidden manner – a Maia, perhaps, or else some manner of tree-spirit?

 _Fëaryn_. If Tyelkormo had the wit of Curufinwë, surely he would have noticed that the term shares a root with the Sinda form of their father’s name – Fëanor, _spirit of fire_.

But their father is dead now, dead and burned and scattered and gone – lost to them now nearly longer than they ever had him. And Curufinwë skulks within the bowels of Amon Ereb, picking at his own wounds and those of his brothers, but never slitting them wide enough to drain their sins clean.

So Tyelkormo does not protest when Aranel tugs at his sleeve one day, pulling gently to steer his steps eastward once more. By the maps of the Noldor, Tyelkormo would reckon, they have reached the sixth or seventh of Ossiriand’s rivers – Duilwen, or more probably Adurant.

But their exact place hardly matters to him – Tyelkormo had had no true plans to follow the Gelion to its termination, and besides.

This is the first time since their meeting that Aranel has touched him.

So when Aranel starts eastward along the new river, and then stops, beckoning for Tyelkormo to follow him –

Tyelkormo follows him.

 

~ ~ ~

Some days into their course along the Adurant, Aranel gestures across the waters to a small isle rising from the river.

“Tol Galen,” Aranel says. “My mother and father live here.”

They can actually speak with one another now, in an odd patois cobbled together of Sinda phrases and Noldo loanwords and mute gestures and Aranel’s laughter. But there must still be some flaw in Tyelkormo’s understanding, for it is not two Eldar who live upon the island, into whose welcoming arms Aranel hurls himself laughing. It is, instead, a mortal couple – an old man and older woman, hoary and stooped with years, wrinkled and furrowed with merriment to match the youth’s. 

Before they had slipped into the warmth of the Adurant – there is no other way to reach the isle but to swim to it, Aranel had indicated – the youth had invited Tyelkormo to meet these – _retainers_ , perhaps had actually been the word, or _attendants_. But he had not pushed or questioned when some instinct in Tyelkormo had shied away.

And at first Tyelkormo had been distracted by the fact that Aranel swam with as much grace as he danced. Tyelkormo could only watch with awe as the youth rose from the embrace of the Adurant, sleek with water, thin silver clothing pressed to every line of his body – but when he felt the weight of Tyelkormo’s staring, Aranel had only laughed and run on ahead, still laughing.

It is all he does when pressed, this shining creature; he does not fight, he does not wound, he does not kill. Tyelkormo –

Tyelkormo had not thought there existed a creature as innocent as this.

Tyelkormo had not thought he could love a creature as innocent as this.

So he only follows, now, and hides himself again amongst the growth of Tol Galen, as Aranel’s river-sodden embraces soak both ancient mortals.

The old mortal man and older mortal woman are obviously overjoyed by the youth’s unexpected arrival. Eventually, they coax him to be seated in the grass, while they themselves bustle to and from a tiny hut, the only structure Tyelkormo can see upon the entire isle, bringing food and drink and blankets and garments.

At that last, Aranel stands, and with one more laughing exchange, begins to strip himself of his wet raiment without the slightest hesitation.

Tyelkormo –

Tyelkormo ducks away.

It seems too much, after all that he has already been granted by the youth’s mere presence, that he could have Aranel’s nakedness too. Vulnerability and faith and that particular brand of shining-eyed conviction do not, Tyelkormo knows – oh how he knows – tend to fare well beside the sons of Fëanáro.

But –

The sons of Fëanáro are not well known for their restraint, either.

He looks up again.

But Aranel has already re-arrayed himself in grey, and he sits upon the grass with his time-worn retainers, eating and chattering and laughing, forever laughing.

They speak purely in the Sinda tongue, these three, though the old man with some less agility than either his wife or Aranel, who must be his lord. But even so, their converse speeds too fast, too much, for Tyelkormo’s already-limited scope of the language to manage.

He cannot miss, though, how many times Aranel makes mention of a _fëaryn_.  It is the only name he has for Tyelkormo – Tyelkormo has neither offered him correction nor given him any other – and whatever else he is saying, Aranel’s delight at having met a creature of legend remains palpable.

His servants’ reactions are puzzling, though.

The old man seems utterly accepting, as though he too has had dealings with creatures he had never expected he might walk amongst. And the older woman –

The older woman, surely Aranel’s other servant, seems both wary and resigned.

As though she too has had dealings with those whose designs upon her were hidden, yet too much of interest to be utterly avoided.  

And from his place in the undergrowth of Tol Galen, watching Aranel shine, Tyelkormo is suddenly struck anew by a reminder of Lúthien.

It is something about the old mortal woman, he thinks. She discomfits him, though he cannot discern how or why.

Perhaps it is the way in which she surveys the isle of Tol Galen, obviously her domain, with far more shrewdness than he would expect of a crone of her years. Perhaps it is the way in which her care for her mate, the old man, is evident in every word, every gesture, she makes toward him, and even toward Aranel, though the Laiquendi youth cannot possibly be so closely related to her by blood. Perhaps it is something about her eyes, wiser and more knowing than –

Hold. Did not Lúthien have grey eyes, too?

Tyelkormo, to his regret, had never looked close enough to say.

But all this is nonsense. Lúthien was of the Sindar folk – in fact, half Elda and half Maia – and there is no means by which her birthright as one of the Firstborn with the blood of a lesser god mixed in could have been reversed for the inevitable creeping aging of the Secondborn. Surely it is only Tyelkormo’s own guilt – the weight of his remorse for having treated Lúthien as he had, so long ago – that brings her to mind now, that has him seeing echoes of her uncanny perception and her inexplicable wisdom and her eerie strength in this stooped old mortal woman who resides so far from the ancestral kingdom of Doriath.

This stooped old mortal woman who turns, suddenly, and looks near full upon his hiding place, as if she knows he is there even though her failing eyes cannot quite pinpoint him.

Even when she finally turns away, responding to another of Aranel’s teasing questions with some amused reply of her own, Tyelkormo can almost feel the weight of her regard upon him.

Lúthien –

Lúthien did have grey eyes, he thinks.

Though it is a common enough color among both their kinds, of course.

 

~ ~ ~

Night is just falling when Aranel finally bids his Mannish servants a fond farewell and clambers back to his feet, making his way back across the small isle and following the rocky path back down to the beach upon which they first alit on Tol Galen.

He smiles when he sees that Tyelkormo has outpaced him there.

“Will you come with me, but a day further east?” he asks. Already he has one foot in the summer-warm waters of the Adurant.

Of course Tyelkormo will go with him. His account to Curufinwë of finding Lúthien and the Silmaril she stole was only that, an account, and in this moment Tyelkormo would be happy to stay upon this side of the middle shores forever – away from his brothers and their mad quarrels, their dead dark eyes, their blood-limmed Oath.

But to Aranel, instead, he merely nods.

It is a hound’s _yes_. It could easily become a lover’s, too.

They spend the night journeying. When they rise again from the Adurant, back upon the banks of the river, Aranel leads them – it is obvious he has some set destination in mind. They start out walking, and Tyelkormo manages the companionable silence for as long as he can before he breaks, reaching out slowly to see if Aranel will bear the touch of his hand.

Aranel shivers, and laughs, when Tyelkormo tries to curl his hand within his own. And though he shakes Tyelkormo away, he still seems more bemused than angry.

“Why?” he asks, coming to stop where he stands and turning to face Tyelkormo.

He is silhouetted against the orb of Tilion. And although his face is cast in shadow, still he shines.

 _Why_ , he asks Tyelkormo, and Tyelkormo has not the words to tell him. . .

So instead he reaches out again. But this time his hands frame Aranel’s face, one to each cheek, and slowly, so slowly – so that the youth can pull away, should he wish – Tyelkormo leans forward to kiss him.

This time it is Aranel who whimpers, as their lips meet.

His mouth is warm, and welcoming, but hesitant. It is easy to guess he has never done this before.

And he tastes _clean_. He has certainly never tasted blood, or drawn it, as Tyelkormo has – whether guilty or innocent, animal or rational, deserved or otherwise.

It could be Tyelkormo who changes that.

No. No, no, NO - it will not be Tyelkormo who changes that!

Aranel pulls away.

“This is why you would come with me?” he asks, panting.

 _This is but one of the reasons I would come with you,_ Tyelkormo would tell him. _Not just to leave my brothers’ mad war and my father’s cursed jewels, but to be with you._

But he has not the words in Aranel’s tongue. He still has not the words.

So he whines, and nods. A hound’s _yes_ , or a lover’s.

And it seems that his answer might even have been enough, for Aranel smiles, a slow sweet thing that spreads across his face with all the liquid smoothness of spilled honey.

“Well, then, my fëaryn,” he murmurs. “I think you will like this place I would show you.”

And with one more of his river-swift laughs, he darts off, sprinting away east in a run that Tyelkormo’s blood surges in demand that he follow.

And so, for what little remains of the night, they run.

For all that this is unfamiliar ground, never once does Tyelkormo lose his breath or his footing. Aranel, it is now revealed, is faster even than him – he need never have worried to travel slow, for he sees now that the youth could outpace him with ease. Yet Aranel never draws too far ahead, and remains instead within hailing distance, calling back to him in the Sinda tongue – what might be taunts for his speed or encouragements for him to pull forward.

Tyelkormo could run faster, but something holds him back. He almost wishes that this strange mad sweet timelessness would never end – that they never reach Aranel’s destination, whatever it is, but instead remain running and calling to one another in the moonlight until the last battle that breaks the world.

For if that were so, then Tyelkormo need never fear for his own actions. Need never learn whether Aranel will reject him. Need never start thinking, worrying, about when he must leave this innocent creature’s company, lest the taint of his foolish Oath overspill and pollute him too.  

But it is not to be, of course, and they reach what must have been Aranel’s destination just before sunrise. Tyelkormo could have guessed that this was it, even had Aranel not stopped and stood in wait for him to catch up. For these falls that pour their waters from the foot of the cloud-wreathed mountains are utterly breath-taking.

“Lanthir Lamath,” Aranel murmurs. Tyelkormo’s still-rude grasp of the Sinda tongue takes this to mean ‘fall-of-echoing-voices.’

And if that is accurate, then it is a name well deserved. For the waters of the falls waters are clean and cold, and shout their joy at being spilled into the Adurant from the moss-clothed rocks above. The spray is light and cool, and through it is filtered the first light of day, throwing bows of color here and there about the solemn river-rocks so that all that place is struck by color and warmth and light.

The very air of Lanthir Lamath is intimate – hallowed – _sacred_ – in a way that Tyelkormo has not felt of any place since sailing East in a blood-stained ship.

So it is his turn to ask Aranel, now. “Why?” _Why bring me here? Me, here?_

And Aranel, stars bless him, does not laugh at his rude and likely wrong pronunciation of the word – one of the very very few Tyelkormo has actually tried to voice – but answers as surely as if the question did not even deserve further thought.

“Because it is my place, where someday I will build my favored dwelling, and I thought you might like to see it,” he says simply.

And even if Tyelkormo did possess adequate words in the youth’s own beautiful, alien tongue, he does not think they could form an adequate response to such conviction.

So instead, there by the banks of the Adurant and the falls of Lanthir Lamath, Tyelkormo Fëanorian kneels. In the first breaking light of day, to the approving voices of the waters, he raises his trembling hands and places them at Aranel’s sides, running coarse palms down smooth grey raiment before coming to a rest at his thighs. For once, their heights are reversed, and it is he who looks some distance up to Aranel.

There is no language left to Tyelkormo now but the lover’s – not the beasts’, not the Sindar’s – and though he is hardly its foremost scholar, he would teach it to Aranel.

As Aranel has taught him the youth’s own, and gifted Tyelkormo with all else besides.

Aranel shivers. “Fëaryn?”

It is good, Tyelkormo thinks, to be known by a name thus unstained – if only the hands he dares lay upon Aranel’s thighs were half so clean! But Tyelkormo was there at Alqualondë too, for all that he now vows again he will never be party to further dark deeds.

“Fëaryn?” Aranel asks again. This time, uncertainty wars with the first signs of panic – he cannot, Tyelkormo remembers, have had this done for him before. So Tyelkormo hums, reassuring, and draws forward to reference that little which the youth has already learned – pressing a kiss to one side, and then the other, of the still-clothed abdomen now so close to his face.

“Fëaryn!” This time it is nearly a shout, and Tyelkormo grins – why, he has not even truly _started_.

The muscles of Aranel’s legs tremble beneath Tyelkormo’s hands as he uses nose and lips and teeth to nudge apart the laces and folds that hold the youth’s lower garments closed. The weight of Aranel’s hands – first one, then the other – come to rest lightly in Tyelkormo’s own hair, and above him the youth gasps as Tyelkormo presses further forward, baring to the sun and the falls the way toward that intimate shrine still hidden beneath Aranel’s robes. And then, the fingers of Aranel’s hands spasm –stiffen – tighten, as Tyelkormo finally finds that which he had sought.

 “ _Fëaryn_!”

But Tyelkormo is, first and foremost, a hunter – focused and patient and careful. He can suffer discomfort and repetition and pain, and he has never yet lost his quarry. And he does not intend to do so now, when the quarry he would bring down is this shining creature, and the end to which he would bring him is one the youth has never known before.

Aranel loses the Sinda tongue soon enough, his cries devolving into wordless pleas even as he loses the last of his fear for Tyelkormo’s actions. His hands tighten in Tyelkormo’s hair as Tyelkormo takes him deep, and then deeper still, but Aranel is too great a creature, even in this most animal of pleasures, to do anything that could spell another harm – despite his obvious pleasure, he does not pull or even thrust, though Tyelkormo tries to encourage him, show that he can take any roughness. He even tries to free himself before he finishes, struggling to pull away from Tyelkormo so that he need not deal with his release. With hands and eyes and tongue Tyelkormo manages to persuade him to stay, but it is obvious that Aranel would not have asked it of him.

Tyelkormo cannot think the last time he knew such goodness. Certainly not here, in Beleriand; certainly not in all that he has done here. He does not deserve this, and yet, Aranel has given it to him.

The youth’s knees wobble when he is spent, and it takes all of Tyelkormo’s speed and agility to dart around behind him, so that he might soften his fall with his own body. But he meets with some success – Aranel collapses into his arms and upon his chest rather than the thin moss adorning the Adurant’s banks. Gently, Tyelkormo pulls Aranel onto his side and draws his garments shut once more, concealing his spent member from the rising sun and cooling spray. In a display of contact new to them both, Aranel burrows his head into Tyelkormo’s chest and murmurs with contentment, his own tongue slow to return.

When it does, though, he would have Tyelkormo know it. “How – how do I?” he asks drowsily, reaching for the laces of Tyelkormo’s own garments.

Even as he reaches down too, to stay the youth’s hand, Tyelkormo realizes with greater certainty still that he cannot stay. Aranel has no part in the dark madness that plagues northern Beleriand, and what is more, he never should have one. And yet, it is by Tyelkormo’s devices that he will be dragged into them, if Tyelkormo cannot muster the strength to step away.

It is midday, and Aranel is slumbering beneath the shade of the beeches, when Tyelkormo finally musters the strength – of will and of body both – to disentangle himself from his young lover’s arms and stand. Arien shines with full vigor, Tol Galen is only a day’s travel away, and the deepening shade will surely wake him in time – Aranel will be safe here.

Tyelkormo dares not even glance back as he flees.

 

~ ~ ~

Tyelkormo does not expect to see Aranel ever again, but in truth, it is only a matter of years.

And it happens when the sons of Fëanáro mow down the shredded remains of the Girdle of Melian, slaughtering their way through Menegroth and bursting into the proud throne room, where they fight ferociously through the royal guards in their attempt to reach Doriath’s new king.  

All this, in search of the Silmaril that Tyelkormo had once told Curufinwë he’d find. The Silmaril that he had returned to Amon Ereb with lies primed to explain its lack, only for Curufinwë to tell him brusquely that it must resurface in Doriath someday, and on that day they would be ready. 

And what is worst about the third, and last, time that Tyelkormo ever sees Aranel is not that the former youth actually wears the cursed gem, or that he stands protectively between Tyelkormo’s brothers and then a nís and three pups who seem to be his own.

It is not even the recognition that flares in his eyes just as Aranel pulls his sword from Tyelkormo’s chest, though Tyelkormo would have liked to spare him the knowledge that he had once loved, and been loved in turn by, not a spirit of the forest but a son of Fëanor.  

But as the world fades – as still Tyelkormo does not hear the call of Mandos to the halls of the West, but instead the siren winds of the everlasting darkness that he once called upon himself – he realizes that what is worst about this last meeting is the futility in Aranel’s eyes.

Eyes that, even as a roaring Curufinwë runs the king of Doriath through in turn, are grey and wide and see all too much.

Eyes that shine like Lúthien’s.

He never could have saved Aranel by leaving him.

**Author's Note:**

> Language notes:  
> \- Aranel is actually another of Dior's titles, meaning "Noble Elf" or "King of Elves."  
> \- Dior's first lines to Celegorm (Sindarin): "You must be a spirit of the forest" | "I didn't think you existed" | [surprise] | "No!"  
> 


End file.
